Metal Mulisha, Suicidal Tendencies collaborate

By Colin Bane | Dec 3, 2013XGames.com

Suicidal Tendencies and the Metal Mulisha teamed up in a new video for the song "Smash It".

The Metal Mulisha motocross team stars in the new music video for "Smash It" by Suicidal Tendencies, filmed at Metal Mulisha co-founder Larry Linkogle's FMX compound in Temecula, Calif., and released on Tuesday as band begins its U.S. tour.

"This song is about smashing your fears and not letting other people or yourself put up barriers, so we reached out to some of our friends who best exemplify that mentality," Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir said. The video features choreographed riding by Linkogle and Mulisha team riders Wes Agee, Kenny Bell, Mat Buyten, Julian Dusseau, Jimmy Fitzpatrick, Jimmy Hill, Brian McCarty, Scotty Stephens, Bobby Lee and Cal Vallone.

Muir says he first met Linkogle and other Mulisha riders while performing together on the Warped Tour in the late 1990s.

"We've been friends for a long time and their first album was the first cassette I ever owned when I was a kid," Linkogle recalls. "Getting to come into the studio to record some vocals for this track and then getting to host the band out at my place for the video is definitely a career highlight. To me it's also a statement for the Metal Mulisha. These are our roots, this is where we're coming from, and this is the direction we're going to continue to head in: core and gnarly, just like Suicidal Tendencies."

The "Smash It" video was directed by Jay Schweitzer, best known for films like the Metal Mulisha team video "Black Friday" -- which opens to the Suicidal Tendencies song "You Can't Bring Me Down" -- and for his long-running "On the Pipe" FMX and freeriding series.

Mpu Dinani/A-Game Photography

Metal Mulisha and members of Suicidal Tendencies gather on the set of the music video for "Smash It."

"Watching those guys is just insane, because so many things could happen, so many things could go wrong, and literally every time they go off a jump they're risking their lives," Muir said. "I have nothing but respect for these guys: If we mess up, it sounds bad. If they mess up, they're in the hospital or worse."

To illustrate the point, the video includes a crash reel of some of the worst slams from Schweitzer's archives, including several from X Games. A graffiti mural in the video pays tribute to fallen riders Jeremy Lusk, Jeff "Ox" Kargola, Adam Pierce, Eigo Sato, Jim McNeil, Tyrone Gilks, Mike Cinqmars, Jono Porter, Jeremy Carter and Caleb Moore.

"It was important for me to open it up with a time lapse of all the names being written down on the wall as a remembrance to those who put their lives on the line for the cause and pushed the sport to where it is now," Schweitzer says. "This is the first music video I've ever directed and it's a huge honor to do this with a band I grew up listening to, along with the Metal Mulisha and all my homies."

Suicidal Tendencies first formed in 1981 in the heart of the Dogtown skateboarding scene in Venice, Calif. –- Muir's older brother, Jim, skated for the legendary Dogtown Z-Boys team –- and its songs have been featured in dozens of skate, BMX, snowboard and motocross videos over the last three decades.

"I've always been involved with action sports and Suicidal has been fortunate to be part of the soundtrack to these sports and this lifestyle since almost the very beginning," Muir said. "When our first record came out, the punk magazines all hated it and the metal magazines all hated it," he recalls. "We got our first love from the skate magazines, and in some ways it's been the skaters and Metal Mulisha fans and other action sports dudes who have kept us going all this time."

The band kicked off the second leg of its Slam City Tour on Nov. 27 in San Luis Obispo, Calif., in support of "13," the first album of new Suicidal Tendencies songs in 13 years.